To the uninitiated, the workshop can be an intimidating place, full of tools you may not know what to do with.

To help, here’s a helpful explanation of common tools and their uses, followed by some DIY tips provided by Mike Steeden Construction and Demolition expert.

1: Socket-Sets:

A definitely much needed tool. You’ll always lose the one you want to use, but the nearest width one can always be utilised to chew-up the bolt heads.

2: Drill Press:

A tall upright machine useful for suddenly snatching flat metal bar stock out of your hands so that it smacks you in the chest and flings your beer across the room, denting the freshly-painted vertical stabilizer which you had carefully set in the corner where nothing could get to it.

3: Allen Keys:

Highly losable. You can keep them on a key-ring, for you to sort through them to find the size out of the 60 you have on the ring isn’t there, more easily.

4: Multi-Pliers:

Contain a handy assortment of sharp and dangerous tools. Best left in its leather sheath and worn on a homeowners belt to make you look macho and increase testosterone levels.

5: Wire Wheel:

Cleans paint off bolts and then throws them somewhere under the workbench with the speed of light. Also removes fingerprints and hard-earned calluses from fingers in about the time it takes you to say, “Oh shit!”

6: Halogen Light:

A work-light that lights up your backyard with the incandescence of a football stadium, causing you to cast a heavy shadow over the area you’re working on so that you need to use a flashlight anyway.

7: Electric Hand Drill

Normally used for spinning pop rivets in their holes until you die of old age.

8: Cordless Drill:

A device that lessens your chance of electrocution 90% over a standard plug-in tool. Guaranteed to lose your power when you need it.

9: Skill Saw:

A portable cutting tool used to make studs too short.

10: Pliers:

Used to round off bolt heads. Sometimes used in the creation of blood-blisters. These have been known to mysteriously increase a man’s cursing vocabulary.

11: Belt Sander:

An electric sanding tool commonly used to convert minor touch-up jobs into major refurnishing jobs.

12: Hacksaw:

One of a family of cutting tools built on the Ouija board principle. It transforms human energy into a crooked, unpredictable motion, and the more you attempt to influence its course, the more dismal your future becomes.

13: Vice-Grips:

Generally used after pliers have failed in the task. To completely round off bolt heads. If nothing else is available, they can also be used to transfer intense welding heat to the palm of your hands.

14: Welding Gloves:

Heavy duty leather gloves used to prolong the conduction of intense welding heat to the palm of your hands.

15: Oxyacetylene Torch:

Used almost entirely for lighting various flammable objects in your workshop on fire. Also handy for igniting the grease inside the wheel hub you want the bearing taken out of.

16: Table Saw:

A large stationary power tool commonly used to launch wood projectiles for testing wall integrity.

17: Hydraulic Floor Jack:

Used for lowering an automobile to the ground after you have installed your new brake shoes, trapping the jack handle firmly under the bumper.

18: Eight-foot long Yellow Pine 2×4:

Used for levering an automobile upward off of a trapped hydraulic jack- handle.

19: Ease-it-out Bolt & Stud Extractor:

A tool ten times harder than any known drill bit that snaps neatly off in bolt holes thereby ending any possible future use.

20: Band Saw

A large stationary power saw primarily used by most handymen to cut good aluminium sheet into smaller pieces that more easily fit into the trash can after you cut on the inside of the line instead of the outside edge.

21: Two-Ton Engine Hoist:

A tool for testing the maximum tensile strength of everything you forgot to disconnect.

22: Phillips Screwdriver

Normally used to stab the vacuum seals under lids and for opening old-style paper-and-tin oil cans and splashing oil on your shirt; but can also be used, as the name implies, to mangle-up Phillips screw heads.

23: Plain-flat headed Screwdriver

A tool for opening paint cans. These are often used to convert the common slotted screws into non-removable slotted screws.

24: Crow Bar:

A tool used to crumple the metal surrounding that clip or bracket you needed to remove in order to replace a 50p part. Also useful during burglaries and street riots.

25: Hose Cutter:

A tool used to make hoses too short.

26: Hammer:

Originally employed as a weapon of war, the hammer nowadays is used as a kind of divining rod to locate the most expensive parts adjacent the object we are trying to hit with it.

27: Stanley-Knife:

Used to open and slice through the contents of cardboard cartons delivered to your front door. Works particularly well on contents such as seats, vinyl records, liquids in plastic bottles, collector magazines, refund cheques, and rubber or plastic parts. Especially useful for slicing work clothes, but only while in use.

28: Swiss Army Knife:

Can always come in handy as a substitute for the tool you need, but you cannot find.

29: Dammit Tools:

Any handy tool that you grab and throw across the garage while yelling “Dammit” at the top of voice. It is also, most often, the next tool that you will need at any given time.

Advice for the Handy-Man:

If you can’t find a screwdriver, use a knife. If you break off the tip, it becomes an improvised screwdriver.

Try to work alone, an audience is rarely any help and only takes the piss out if you when you get it wrong again.

Despite what you may have been told by your mother, praying and cursing are both helpful in home repair… but only if you are working alone.

Work in the kitchen whenever you can… many fine tools are there. It’s warm and dry, and you are close to the refrigerator.

If it’s electronic, get a new one, or consult a twelve-year-old.

Stay simple minded, Plug it in, Get a new battery, Replace the bulb or fuse, See if the tank is empty, Try turning it to the “on” switch. Or Just paint over it.

Always take credit for miracles. If you dropped the alarm clock while taking it apart and it suddenly starts working, you have healed it.

Regardless what people say, kicking, pounding, throwing, and shaking sometimes does help.

If something looks level, it is level.

If at first you don’t succeed, redefine success.

Above all, if what you’ve done is stupid, but it works, don’t toy with it any-more!